MCGRATH DOESN'T TAKE A BREAK FROM CARING SCHOOL WORKS TO SAVE AT-RISK STUDENTS.

Byline: CONNIE LLANOS  Staff Writer

NEWHALL -- Nestled in the hills of eastern Newhall sits the pristine J. Michael McGrath Elementary School.

The four-year-old campus is isolated from other Newhall School District campuses, but it's more than the mountainous terrain that sets it apart from the rest.

This primary school is one of the poorest in the Santa Clarita Valley with one of the largest percentages of minority students -- predominantly Latino -- where more than half don't speak English as their first language.

The school struggles academically -- its 2006 state test scores are below the state expectation and pale in comparison with neighboring, more affluent, schools as well as the district average.

These challenges have forced McGrath to engage in a variety of alternative instruction methods, one of which has 11-year-old Julissa Ortiz in class two weeks before some of her friends.

The curly haired pupil says she doesn't mind.

``I get to spend time with my friends,'' Ortiz said. ``But the other kids say they wish they were on vacation like the rest of the kids in school.''

To help these ``at-risk'' kids, some in danger of repeating grades, McGrath has shortened winter and summer vacations and opened school for special intersessions. School officials also extended the school day.

Teachers and administrators say offering extra school time to the kids who need it most speaks to their willingness to do whatever it takes to improve classroom performance.

``The barriers for these kids to be successful are so great, and the significant efforts on the part of students and teachers make these achievements some of the most significant in the entire valley,'' McGrath Principal Larry Heath said.

Heath, who has worked with the Newhall Elementary School District since 1981, seems determined to keep his students competitive.

``We need to respond to these kids' needs so they can remain competitive when they get to middle school and beyond,'' Heath added.

``They will be put into classrooms with kids whose parents are professionals and college-educated. We don't want anyone saying, `Gee whiz, here come the poor kids from the east side.'''

While most Santa Clarita children remained at home during winter break, Ortiz was one of 154 pupils -- about a quarter of McGrath's students -- in attendance at the school's winter intersession.

McGrath's school calendar was adjusted two years ago because of low test scores. The shift was to schedule two weeks of winter intersession, and up to four weeks of intersession during spring and summer breaks for children who fall below state standards or who are at risk of retention, school officials said.

These children, deemed ``high intensity'' students, also are given one hour of extra classroom time at the end of the day, four days a week.

On the fifth day, teachers meet to discuss and document how their weeks have gone. Teachers and administrators also fill out weekly reports that address how their instruction has focused on key standards, what materials they have used and how they assessed their students.

Some teachers would argue against doing this type of additional work outside of classroom time, but fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Avilla said she prefers it.

``Our whole main push here is that we will do whatever it takes to help these students,'' Avilla said.

She admitted that some teachers have not shared in the vision of the school and have left, but those who have remained are focused on the same goals, she said.

``I have a passion for this type of child,'' Avilla added.

The 25-year-old teacher has volunteered to work every intersession McGrath has offered so far.

Teachers also noted that some of the poor-performing students were discipline problems, and the school cracked down, issuing suspensions and using role-playing strategies to teach acceptable behavior.

Avilla also is able to monitor her students' progress through high-tech methods.

McGrath's upper-grade classrooms are stocked with computers that have special software to assess each child's skills in various subjects. The program then gives students a chance to practice lesson plans with interactive games.

Teachers can then access each child's progress through printouts.

Avilla enjoys the hands-on approach.

``The work that we are doing is not fruitless, and it makes all of it worthwhile when you see that student thriving.''

David Moguel, a professor at California State University, Northridge, who specializes in bilingual education, fears that some of these pupils could be spending too much time away from their peers.

In a commonly used practice called tracking, students are separated into groups based on their intellectual abilities.

At McGrath, students are grouped by their abilities for half the day, during three hours devoted to teaching language arts. Students are then grouped randomly for the remaining three hours of the school day.

High-intensity students then return to their language arts group for their extended lessons.

``These tracking or ability groupings may be noble in intent, but they don't work,'' Moguel said.

``It is like putting a bunch of kids who are low-skilled at baseball in one team to give them special attention. They will not get better because they have nothing to learn from each other,'' he said.

Moguel said parents, even those whose children are not being singled out, should seek to have their children in integrated classrooms.

``In the finest colleges and universities in the nation, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, their selective admissions policies say they want to admit a diverse group of students.''

``They could fill their freshman classes with 4.0GPA students who scored 1600 on their SATs, but they don't. People do not learn best when they are with a bunch of people that are the same as them. That is when you learn nothing,'' Moguel said.

McGrath's alternative programs have raised the school's API scores from the mid-600s, when the school opened, to its current score of 746, still below the state-expected standard of 800.

Some experts disapprove of the emphasis on test scores for an English-language-learner population.

Research suggests children who don't speak English score lower on standardized tests because of a lack of language skills not a lack of intellect, said Jamal Abedi, a professor at University of California, Davis, and an expert in English-language-learner assessment.

``Let's say for math if you have a set of questions that are very complex in language, the child is then being tested not just on math skills but also language,'' Abedi said.

``Language becomes a nuisance variable.''

The idea of modifying standardized tests for English-language-learners, as well as special-education students -- who are held to the same standards as all students in state tests -- has been discussed in academic circles, Abedi said, and studies show flexibility is necessary.

Abedi said testing children in their native languages to measure their true intellect has proven successful in studies.

The child can then be taught based on what they know how to do, in a bilingual setting, Abedi added.

Heath has made an effort to have his staff reflect his student body. About 40 percent of the teachers at McGrath are bilingual, and all of the office staff speaks Spanish, Heath said. But they are only encouraged to use native languages, mostly Spanish, when the child is very confused.

Heath's voice grows in volume when he begins to talk about his students.

No stranger to dealing with a struggling child -- Heath is father to a special-needs child -- he insists that his methods will fill in the gaps for the students at McGrath.

``Learning is hard work, but for some of these kids it's like weightlifting,'' he said. ``For so long in public education we thought our duty as teachers was teaching.

``The duty is for children to learn. To say that when an 8-year-old fails it's his fault is ridiculous.''

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CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Kindergarten teacher Ivy Quasp works with students on the alphabet during class at McGrath Elementary School. The school has an extended learning program for at-risk students after school and during their breaks.

(2 -- color) Julissa Ortiz, 11, raises her hand to answer a question from fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Avilla at McGrath Elementary School in eastern Newhall.

(3) Franky Lucero, 11, works on problems on a computer in Jennifer Avilla's fifth-grade class at McGrath Elementary. A computer program assesses students' skills and tracks their progress.

David Crane/Staff Photographer